Following the publication of Liza of Lambeth, W. Somerset Maugham would go on to establish himself as one of the most prolific, best-selling novelists of the twentieth century. For all that Liza did not dramatize life in a thievesโ den or depict the poor as atavistic brutes, its honest treatment of working-class pastimes and appetites offended middle-class readers as much as the bludgeonings and chivings of Arthur Morrisonโs violent A Child of the Jago had one year before. Maugham vividly captured a working-class coupleโs illicit romance and a neighborhoodโs collective surveillance and punishment of the womanโs promiscuity and the manโs marital infidelity. Today, the novelโs treatment of womenโs experiences, working-class life, and health and medicine in the Victorian city are freshly relevant.